Technology for Entrepreneurs: What’s Your New Tech Obsession?

What’s your new tech obsession?

In this ever-changing world, it’s hard to keep track of new technology. Nowadays, if you think of an idea, there is probably someone out there doing it already. When you need a certain type of service, google it and you shall get it. It’s truly empowering and sometimes overwhelming. As entrepreneurs, we always look for the balance between convenience and budget. There’s no right answer. It all depends on what kind of budget you’re working with, your abilities, and patience. Here are a few services that will support your business to the next level.

Insightly | Customer Relationship & Project Management

Insightly is the online Customer Relationship & Project Management software used by over 400,000 small businesses world-wide. I’m using their service for an upcoming project (announcement coming soon!). Insightly helps small businesses deal with the vital task of managing their leads, contacts, organizations, partners, vendors, and suppliers. Insightly’s web-based customer relationship management features help you catch up everything about your business. Insightly also offers CRM and Project Management in one so you can make sure you’re on top of your customer relationship at every stage. With the project overview screen, you can see the recent activity on any project, and track project performance against milestones over time.

Google Apps for Work | Email & Cloud Service

Are you using yourname@gmail.com as your business contact? Want a business email but don’t want to give up using Google Drive and other features? Get your own business email address through Google Apps for Work. Gmail changed the way we conduct business in many ways. Google Drive and document features help us to share documents easier and faster, co-working process more efficient, and store things safer. Hangout, Docs, Drive, and more, you can do it all with your business email.

Travelshift | Booking & Marketing platform

Hotel bookings, car rentals, tour bookings, ticket sales, and more, Travelshift is your solution. Travelshift is a travel booking software that allows you to build a marketplace for travel services. It reduces your work and maximises profits, with built-in features that you won’t find in any other software enabled marketplace. I recently had an opportunity to develop a tour booking business and saw how crucial it was to work with the right service. Travelshift software was launched and tested in Iceland, creating a number of booking platforms for various businesses in Iceland and beyond.

Cloudways | Hosting

Having a stable and fast hosting service is the key to a successful online business. I moved to cloud hosting for that reason. There are many advantages to using cloud hosting, but which one is right for your business? Cloudways is a hosting service managing platform for your needs. Cloudways lets you choose your cloud infrastructure from Amazon, DigitalOcean, Google, and Vultr. You can manage your servers in just a few clicks. As you’ll easily learn, purchasing the service through Cloudways is about $5 more expensive than from the individual company’s site (DigitalOcean for example).

The reason I decided to go with Cloudways was because they have fantastic customer service. You can always ask for help through their 24/7 chat window. They also offer one free website migration service. For your new cloud hosting:

Zoom | Online Meeting & Webinar Tool

There are meetings that Google Hangout or Skype just won’t do. These are probably the best free services in the 21st century, but for business meetings I prefer using Zoom. Among many other online meeting & webinar tools, Zoom is affordable and easy to use. It offers HD video, HD voice, full screen or gallery view, and it’s usable via mobile devices.

As a meeting host, all you need to do is share the link of your meeting room, and anyone can join in without logging in. You can also record the meeting and it automatically converts into a video file when the meeting is over. Their free service offers 45-min meetings at a time. If you conduct online business meetings often, it’s beneficial to use a service like Zoom.

Affiliates

If you’re using good services that you want to recommend to others, see if they offer an affiliate program. They often do. It’s a good way to earn some money while recommending a great service to your client. A win-win! I also included a few affiliate links in this article (wink wink). Here are some of the most basic affiliate services you can feature on your site:

Juno Kim, a happiness-seeking storyteller. Photographer, writer, and trained mechanical engineer. Life-long nerd. I left the cubic farm to follow my true love: the world. A firm believer of serendipity, astronomy enthusiaster, and living by passion and love in life. Currently, on a quest to discover stories and find the place where I can call 'home'. Follow my journey through @RunawayJuno and Google+ .